By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Impact Wrestling Hits
Josh Alexander vs. Bobby Fish for the Impact World Championship: A strong television main event title defense for Alexander over Fish, who was working in his home town. The styles of Alexander and Fish complemented each other nicely and this is a match worth going out of your way to see if you haven’t watched the show.
Josh Alexander and Bully Ray opening segment: Bully telling Alexander that he wants to do things the right way is a really good storyline. Bully is a great talker and was totally believable when he explaining why he intends to take this approach. But the history of the Bully Ray character creates a real mystery when it comes to whether he’s shooting straight or setting up Alexander. Steve Maclin and Moose played their parts well, and Bobby Fish reminded viewers that he can do more than chime in with a quick sound byte before deferring to a faction leader.
Killer Kelly vs. Tasha Steelz in a No DQ match: Another good outing for Kelly, whose mysterious character continues to be compelling. Steelz taking the loss to help build Kelly was the right move. That said, Steelz needs bounce back wins over other wrestlers and the company needs to be more protective of Savannah Evans in her enforcer role.
Gisele Shaw, Deonna Purrazzo, and Chelsea Green vs. Jessicka, Taya Valkyrie, and Rosemary: A soft Hit for the heel trio going over to help Purrazzo and Green get some heat back after dropping the Knockouts Tag Team Titles at Bound For Glory. I would still prefer to see Purrazzo, Green, and Valkyrie work as singles wrestlers.
Impact Wrestling Misses
Frankie Kazarian forfeits the X Division Title for a shot at the Impact World Championship: Alexander vs. Kazarian looks like a hell of a match on paper. And I give Impact creative a lot of credit for doing an excellent job of striving to make the Impact World Championship feel like the most important thing in their storyline universe. But the idea of Kazarian beating Mike Bailey for the X Division Championship just so he could exercise Option C was disappointing. Yes, Kazarian was given a boost by beating Bailey, but he could have been given a boost by beating someone else and then simply challenged Alexander to a title match. Perhaps there’s more to the story in terms of why they took the belt off of Bailey, but I’m not a fan of the move if it was just to set up Option C.
Trey Miguel vs. Alex Zayne vs. Laredo Kid vs. Yuya Uemura vs. Kenny King vs. Black Taurus in a six-way: A random six-way match with a few sloppy looking and even dangerous spots, including the finishing move that saw Zayne slammed on the back of his head. The match also suffered from predictability in that I assumed Miguel would go over, and Zayne taking yet another loss in Impact was no surprise. I loved that Mike Bailey worked a lot of singles matches as the X Division Champion, and I’d really like to see more X Division singles matches in general.
Matt Cardona vs. Bhupinder Gujjar: The basic match was fine until the silly distraction finish. Brian Myers walking out and revealing his Major Players t-shirt should not have surprised anyone, let alone caused Gujjar to become so distracted that he lost the match. That said, it was good to see Cardona back after an injury layoff, and hopefully he and Myers will end up filling the new need for a top heel duo in the tag team division.
So, Kazarian’s storyline is he goes for the X-division title so as to earn a guaranteed shot at the heavyweight belt, but what SHOULD have happened is he just says “I want a shot at the heavyweight belt!” and been given on.
Oooooooook.
Stay angry, Mike. Never change.